Forrester put out a great white paper entitled “The Best and Worst of Paid Search in 2009“. It is a good read, but mostly data-driven. The bottom line is simple, are you doing the 5 things that they did the entire study off of? See below:

1. Does the keyword appear in the paid search ad title and description? - This is a no-brainer but often overlooked. They are searching a particular keyword on purpose, make sure you deliver that keyword.

2. Does the ad copy “pre-qualify” clickers? You don’t want ad copy to totally distract visitors, however, you don’t want to falsey drive people into your website as you wont convert them. Try and be both compelling, but also, try and explain what it is you are going to offer them before they click.

3. Does the ad contain a compelling call to action? This is a no-brainer and often overlooked. Put a specific promo in your ad copy like “Free Shipping”, “Free Download”, etc.

4. Is the landing page content relevant to the keyword? This is another often overlooked issue. If someone typed in ‘Purple Widget’ are you selling a purple widget on your landing page? You better be!

5. Does the landing page employ Scenario Design practices to aid user experiences? Is the page usable? Does it have the call to actions necessary to convert a customer?

If you think of all the above items before launching a paid search campaign, and execute on them, your campaign is 300% more likely to be a successful one!

When we get new clients on board, the first think they want to be taught is how to write good copy to rank well in the search engines. The first thing I tell them is to write for the consumer as if you were selling it to them in person first. Once you have completed a masterpiece of a sales presentation that will convert any reader into a buyer, then focus on the SEO portion. Search Engines are smart, so you don’t need to do that much, but it would not hurt to turn some of the generic words into specific keyword phrases as these types of phrases tend to rank quicker and convert higher than their generic counterparts.

If you were writing a product description for an electric bicycle, one of the sentances may come out looking like this:

“This is one of the best bikes in our inventory and our most popular seller. It carries a 500w motor and can carry a 200 pound person up a hill while maintaining a speed of over 20mph. This is the most powerful bike in our inventory”

Now, if I did some keyword research, I would know that some good targets for keywords would be “electric bike” “peddle assist bike” and “motorized bike” So based off of this, I would take my description and change it up to look like this:

“This is one of the best motorized bikes in our inventory. and our most popular seller. This electric bike carries a 500w motor and with the use of peddle assist, is capable of carrying a 200 pound person up a hill at over 20mph. This is the most powerful electric bike in our inventory.”

So, to recap, the process for good writing technique:

1. Right the page as if you were simply trying to sell someone.
2. Do research to find the best keywords to go after for this particular content.
3. Find ways of inserting these keywords to make the content more descriptive toward the long tail. Don’t stuff it in where it does not make since, always remember it needs to read well first, make search engines happy second.

A theory I have been toying with (I am sure many are toying with) is that inbound links will be seconded to the weight Google will give you from the pages of Twitter and Facebook. Lets face it, nothing is more important than a Social endorsement. It would be the same reason why DMOZ for many years was the most coveted and most powerful inbound link, because a human had to endorse it.

The social space does pose a problem for Google if they are going to try and bake it into their algorithm. People use ‘Tiny Urls’ for the most part, so they will need to start crawling these links. This issue could explode as SEO’s will manipulate this to their own benefit by spamming the social sites,  which already have a huge issue on their hands. Also, many people wont link to sites with the proper “Anchor Text”. Google would need to read the conversation and decide how to decipher relevancy from it.

Any thoughts on how they can accomplish this? Email me. Any good ones will be posted on this blog with a nice little inbound link to your site.

I keep hearing big industry experts make very provocative claims like “SEO is dead”. Absolute nonsense. Perhaps SEO in its current state is dead, but Search Engines, and figuring out ways to optimize marketing campaigns around it, will only excel as it continues to get harder and harder to do.

There are going to be changes in the industry, here is what I think will happen over the course of the next 2 years as Search Engines start adopting Web 3.0.

Things that won’t happen:

1. Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter have a very long way to go when it comes to taking over Google, Yahoo and Bing. They serve different purposes and it will remain this way for some time. And even if something nuts were to happen and I am wrong in this statement, just like Search Engines in the past, these sites will also have exploits that a good “optimization company” can take advantage of. It is possible that these sites take some market share, however, it will probably be at a similar rate of traffic that Search Engines are still gaining by way of new users and a more savvy audience goes online and uses search engines. For the most part, this change will be unnoticed to everyday businesses looking to market in search engines.

2. Search engines going to paid only - I have been hearing this one for 13 years now and it simply cannot happen. Many search engines have tried it, all have failed. Search engines are mainly used as research points, not a place to buy stuff. Research can lead into buying, but 70% of search engines traffic is not worth the cost per click that a search engines would charge to a company. So they would not have enough paid results to satisfy their audience. A research-visitor is often not far enough down a buying funnel to make it worth a business’ money to pay for that visitor. Search engines need up-to-date free content from websites to keep their users happy.

3. Nothing left on the home page to be optimized - Sure, the landscape is changing, especially the primary search results page. Real Time, Shopping results, maps and news are starting to suck up valuable real estate. Bt guess what, those pieces too are optimizable, it is all about keeping up with those trends to be successful.

Things that will change:

1. How SEO is done will change - I believe that over the next 2 years, SEO will change more than the last 10. Links and Content have ruled over the last 6 years. The next natural progression in my eyes is that links will take a back seat to content, and content, depending on a “syndication score” will rule. Meaning, the more places that content or concept shows up in the news, social sites and blogs, the more value it has.

2. On page optimization factors will slowly go away - Search engines wont care about terms like meta tags, code bloat and SEO friendly URLs. Their indexing and spidering capabilities on the content itself will be strong enough to bypass these factors.

3. How many things one will have to optimize - A good Search Engine Optimization program will be forced focus on many different factors, including News, Real Time, Shopping, Local and image/video search. These sources will equally occupy the home page and force a diversity in focus.

4. SEO companies will stop selling rankings - Results are no longer static. What is ranked today wont be ranked tomorrow (or an hour from now). Campaigns will need be sold as an ROI-driven model or traffic strategy. Ranking reports will be near useless. I can see this pose the biggest issue for SEO companies to learn how to set ROI-driven expectation and not rankings.

5. Mobile and Local marketing will be something that companies will be forced to adopt as geo-location software is getting better and better. Instead of someone doing a search from a computer for a coffee shop, they are going to use their phone or GPS system. Small, geo-specific businesses will undergo a radical change equal or greater to the recent changes with yellow page books. I actually feel sorry for the local small business owner. They are in the most dynamic of spaces online that they will learn. Problem is that most have been unable to adopt the changes from yellow pages to online, not sure they are prepared for the next phase.

Search Engine Marketing as a business will change, but it is not going away anytime soon. Naysayers beware when we sit down in 5 years and compare blog posts.

2010 will be the biggest shift in Search Engine Marketing that we will see since the inception of Search. In fact, it started happening over the last several months.

Google and Bing are doing an exceptional job of finding fresh or “real-time” results. This means that you need to keep your site as up-to-date as possible by adding fresh content. Here are some tips that I use to make sure my websites are staying nice and fresh:

1. Wake up and read one piece of information on your industry each morning. Then, go to Twitter and comment on this article. Make sure Twitter and your Blog are in sync, and then take it once step further, sync Twitter and Facebook. You can do this in Facebook. Just type in “Twitter” in the application section.

2. Each week, come up with your own article. This does not need to be a life-changing, industry-changing piece of information. Give your insight on something within your industry. Write 150-200 words and post in on your blog. Don’t have a blog? Get one. It costs about $200 to get a professional to install one on your website. I can refer you to a bunch of people that can do this, just ask!

3. For all of my ecommerce websites, I have someone “review” one product a week and put it on the bottom of the product page. This will not only help your search engine rankings, but it is certain to help your conversion when someone lands on that page. Just make sure your review is favorable!

4. Incentvize clients, subscribers, etc. to come to your website and leave a comment or testimonial. Offer them a link (just make sure the site you are linking to is authoritative) Offer discounts, free stuff, whatever you need. Content is king and is the only thing that matters!

5. Digg, Post to Facebook and Bookmark every time you write content. If you have Wordpress, you can automate this. If not, do it manually. If you have questions on how to do this, email me.